US: What Is The Impact Of Visa Suspension?

Article by Suman M Published on: 12:00 am, 24 June 2020

US President Donald Trump’s ‘Buy American Hire American’ campaign truly worked well for him during the previous elections. In the latest decision by Trump’s administration, the president decided to suspend the foreigners’ work visa temporarily, until the year-end.

Now, this decision of him is claimed to be an inevitable act to protect the local jobs from foreign workers grabbing those spots during the pandemic unemployment but is said to be one of those strong moves made by Trump to have an edge in the elections coming to this year-end.

It is true that over 45 million people in the USA have filed the unemployment since March, right from the time the country had to order lockdown to control the virus spread. But there seems to be a huge impact on foreign workers, US and Indian IT companies in the country.

If we have to look at the statistics, this new move on migration blocks almost 220,000 people into the US, of which 61,000 are just from H-1B, L1, H4, and L2 visas. Along with these four types of visas, Trump also suspended J1 and H2A visas till this calendar year ends.

H-1B Visas

The total number of H-1B visas issued annually is 85,000 of which 20,000 is Master quota. A majority of a total of 275,000 H-1B applications received for the 2021 fiscal year were from Indian nationals, which is at 67.7 percent and 13.2 percent applications are from China.

This new move from Trump, fortunately, does not affect the H-1B workers who are already in the US, and also those who got H-1B visas and not in the country at this moment can still re-enter the country. Also, the people who are waiting for visa renewals are not impacted by the new policy.

L Visas

L1 Visas appear to be the most rejected during the extensions filed within the US, more than that of H-1B visas extension rejection. Now that Trump has suspended L1 visas that usually allows the transfer of executives of an organization to their US offices, it will impact the US tech companies on a large scale.

OPT-STEM Student Work Visa

OPT-STEM work visa is not impacted by the fresh policy and the eligible students can be considered a ticket to an H-1B visa. While the OPT allows the student to work in the US for 12 months after graduation, STEM allows an additional 24 months of work exposure in the US. Companies could push their F-1 student visa holders’ H-1B visa applications if the person is currently in the US.

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